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Thursday, October 27, 2016

Russia and the West are fighting to decide whether Syria will be run by Sunni Islamists backed by Saudi Arabia or Shiite Islamists backed by Iran. This insane civil war has burned up countless lives, not to mention plenty of dollars, rubles, euros and pounds. The only certain winners of this war, once the dust has settled, will chant “Allahu Akbar” and call for the death of the infidels.

Sadly this is nothing new. Russia got the PLO started before Bill Clinton decided to become its sugar daddy. Smuggling weapons to the Mujahedeen to fight the Russians got us into Afghanistan. Except these days it’s the Russians who, through the Iranians, are funneling weapons to the locals to fight us. Between us and the Russians, we’ve put wagonloads of weapons into the hands of Jihadis in Iraq and Syria. The consequences will be felt in Moscow, New York, London and Paris.

The West and the Warsaw Pact countries used to fuel foreign wars. These days the war is at home.

Russia and the NATO countries suffer from low birth rates and rising Muslim demographics, but are in a senseless competition to determine which emergent Caliphate will be able to draw its borders in territories it can’t populate. It’s a battle over a pittance taking place in a burning building.

Moscow has around 2 million Muslims. London has over 1 million. Both sides are at risk of losing their own capital cities to real invasions. The EU and Putin’s Eurasian dreams are both built on the Roman notion that the barbarians can be integrated and will make good foot soldiers and laborers.

France’s President Hollande has called for the creation of an “Islam of France”. Putin suggests that the Russian Orthodox Church has more in common with Islam than Catholicism. Obama preaches that, “Islam has always been part of America”. But such efforts at integration will always fail.

The popular European excuse is that Islamic terrorism represents a failure to integrate the terrorist. Islamic terrorism is indeed caused by a failure to integrate. The mistake is assuming that integration on a civilizational scale is possible. It’s not. You can integrate a few people. You can’t integrate a civilization.

There is a long history of Europeans using Islamic raiders and invaders as weapons against each other. Most of us know that our first international conflict was the First Barbary War against Muslim slavers and pirates. But it was the British who found it useful to use the Barbary pirates to clear rivals from the water. Louis XIV of France played a similar role in the Battle of Vienna. For that matter the Muslim conquest of the Middle East heavily depended on their exploitation of Christian rivalries.

Our modern malaise is simply a failure to learn anything useful from history.

The Cold War has become reborn as a strange farce in which two failing power blocs are fighting an old war that no longer has any purpose or meaning. Russia has reinvented its brand, but not its ambitions. Its clumsy alliance with Iran will fall apart once the Shiite terror state has gotten what it wanted and boots the Russians out of its backyard. America’s alliance with Saudi Arabia may one day be described by historians as the cause of our downfall.

The West and Russia are reliant on Muslim demographics to power faltering empires whose ideological ends stand in sharp contrast to their Islamic means. Putin claims to want to protect Christendom with an army that is increasingly Muslim. The EU asserts that it is defending secular democracy, but it’s betting its future on a citizenry whose Islamic religion mandates theocratic Sharia jurisprudence.

A Muslim citizenry will not maintain secular democracy. A Muslim army will not protect Christians. The West used to be dependent on Muslim oil. It has since become addicted to the much more dangerous supply of Muslim demographics. Societies with low birth rates are relying on Muslims to make up the gap in manpower and maintain nations that are not expanding or even replacing their own numbers.

Oil dependency was dangerous. Demographic dependency is lethal.

Russia and the West can make jets that casually break the sound barrier. What they aren’t doing is making people. European welfare states and Russian expansionism are built on Muslim populations.

As imperial strategies go, that’s a suicide pact.

But instead of addressing this core civilizational threat, the West and Russia are squandering blood and treasure to decide whether Sunnis or Shiites should dominate Syria. Billions of dollars are being spent to lend an air force, weapons and some measure of ground troops to Iran and the Saudis in their spat.

Russian S-300 missiles now protect Iran’s Fordow nuclear fuel plant. Fordow is located near the Shiite holy city of Qom because Iran’s nuclear plans are inextricably tied to its theology. Last year, Putin offered Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khamenei a copy of the Koran that had been gifted by Lenin to Uzbekistan. Putin might have done better to keep it and read it before looking at a map of Greater Iran.

The United States has been dragged into several wars by Saudi Arabia. We have spent trillions of dollars defending the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris and their assorted brethren from their enemies while fighting Sunni terror spread by them. The tentacles of Sunni terror now regularly reach deep inside our homeland while we continue defending the homelands of the financiers of Sunni Islamic terror.

Syria is an imperialist war. But it’s not our imperialism. It’s barely even Russia’s imperialism.

Russia and the West are there as pawns of their Islamic allies. Putin and NATO aren’t protecting their influence because the influence goes entirely the other way. The West does not dictate anything to the Saudis nor does Russia get to tell Iran what to do. Instead the old empires are called in when the wannabe caliphates want a power with a big military machine to do their dirty work for them.

Russia and the West are obsessed with a factional struggle in the face of a civilizational struggle. Their failure to recognize the civilizational threat of the caliphate is the greatest threat to their future.

Familiar wars and familiar enemies are easier to fight. It is easier to recreate the Cold War as farce than to recognize that a far older war has come around again. Russia and the West are replaying the tragic history of the Byzantine–Sassanid wars whose ultimate victors were the Mohammedan invaders.

The only thing that the wars between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire accomplished was to weaken them enough to allow Islam to conquer both of the proud empires. Both sides courted the Arab tribes and made use of them in their conflict with each other. They did not consider the possibility that the prolonged conflict would not end with either a Persian or Byzantine victory, but that the barbarians they had been using as pawns would end up claiming everything. It’s a familiar story replaying today.

Civilizations that fail to learn from history become the object lessons of history. It would be a tragedy if Europe went the way of the Byzantine Empire and a shame if Russia went the way of Persia.

It might be time to rethink what there is to be gained in Syria and lost in the besieged cities of the West.

21
comments:

Infidel
said...

Civilizational suicide, by ZPG. Tried to warn the younger generations, to no avail. Figured I'd be dead anyway before it happened, now I'm not so sure :)

High productivity and life expectancy means that we all enjoy the fruits of our more efficient civilization. We don't need many laborers anymore. Less is better.

The notion, held by Russia, Europe, and America, that a falling birthrate should be compensated by implacable Muslims defies reason. A quickly reproducing hostile subculture is a fatal cancer.

Daniel and many of us see that Europe, Anglosphere, Russia, Japan (maybe others) have much in common here. I hope their leaders are also smart enough to recognize their friends and enemies. Allowing the enemy (Islam) to exploit our petty differences is stupid and deadly.

A below-replacement birthrate is an admission that humanity and its society really have no value and no future. Giving birth to children is an expression of faith in the future and the value of humanity. The West has lost this faith and now views the purpose of life is to have as much leisure-time and entertainment as possible and it is government's main job to supply this. That is why the US puts various rock musicians who died of drug overdoses on its postage stamps instead of people who really contributed something to society such as Presidents, scholars and military heroes as it once did.The recent UNESCO vote denying any Jewish, and thus any Christian connection with Jerusalem which the majority of Christian countries in Europe and Latin America refused to oppose is an open admission that these societies no longer have ANY values worth preserving. Thus, civilizational suicide which Daniel is describing here is the logical consequence of these views.

Look at the bright side, we know historically that creativity and productivity are reduced as Islam expands, so in another decade or two our next children will thank us for ensuring they never need to fear an oil shortage.

Hillary Clinton is dying to become elected President of the United States so she can get involved in this insanity. Hillary the war hawk will set up a no-fly zone over Syria. A Russian plane or two will be shot down, then a few US planes, perhaps a Chinese aircraft, and the WWIII theatre will be set in motion. Start digging your bunkers at home.

The necessity of importing foreigners to make up for declining population does not ring true to me. Global warming is an issue, however bogus, that has been widely discussed but where was there anything remotely like it where low birth rates became evident. Immigration has been a stealth issue and no discussion or justification was ever offered. Moreover, the worst option of all was just stuck at the top of the Western to do list: import Muslims. Yet, there were more attractive and sensible alternatives such as encouraging marriage and child bearing and discouraging homosexuality, lunatic feminism, and casual divorce.

I'm not buying it, Mr. G., but it's practically holy writ now.

There is no Russian expansionism. Syria, Crimea, E. Ukraine, and S. Osettia were reactive only.

The strangest part, as western born, is being able to experience the wilfully induced surrender of a highly developed culture to a pré medieval barbaric one in real time instead of just reading about it in a history book and seeing that indeed this suicidal false moral guilt ridden rot that triggered the collapse started from the progressive liberal elite political class's head down.

Follow the Money: The war ongoing in Syria is really about the natural gas in the Persian Gulf - and who will get to export this gas to Europe. It's all about the money. Syria's Assad said 'no' to allowing the Qatar gas line to pass through Syrian territory - hence the Hillary/Obama weaponizing ISIS to take out Assad.

In addition, Russia does not want to lose its port on the Med in Syria - or its Crimean Port either (Ukrainian conflict).

Qatar (Sunni) wants the gas line and the big money - and the Saudi's want to run an oil line to the EU through Syria - again BIG MONEY. This would mean that Russia would lose its EU gas line revenue - and collapse the Russian economy.

And, as Frau Katze says - "The only ulrimate winner will be Islam."

"Civilizations that fail to learn from history become the object lessons of history. It would be a tragedy if Europe went the way of the Byzantine Empire and a shame if Russia went the way of Persia." -- Daniel Greenfield

Has at any time in islam's ugly, genocidal, bloody, intolerant, Jew hating, totalitarian, supremacist past spread to as many continents as it has today? Will we see an islamic Dark Ages spread across the entire globe and enforced w/western technology?

Wars and rumors of wars...like Mosul. You tell the enemy well in advance you are coming. How stupid is that? Yet, they do it each time, and then if there is a Muslim Holy day, they stop the war until it's over. I think Trump will have a different approach. That is why the money changers, and everything is about money, fear him. That's why ISIS wants Hillary. She is easy to fool. American Liberals have to be the most suicidal dumb people in the entire world. No doubt about it, war is coming to America. Better pray the Crusaders can prevail. We don't need Muslims in America. Can't trust any of them.

Your view that a below-replacement birthrate connotes decadence and heralds impending doom was assumed in the past. However, improvement of the gene pool by motivated reproduction by above average parents could increase economic productivity while decreasing social ills.

Some species did evolve by massive procreation. The human survival strategy appears to be adaptability by intelligence.

ABSJ1136-I have been reading Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler and Richard Evans' history of the 3rd Reich. Both point out how ideas of eugenics were very popular in Germany long before the Nazis came to power. This was based on the idea that "bad traits" were supposedly biologically determined and inherited and those should be bred out of the human race. Add to this the English who popularized the ideas of 'social Darwinism' that the "fit" should not feel bad about stomping over the less intelligent in a supposed race to define "the survival of the fittest". We see the horrors that this sort of thinking lead to. Traditional thinking was based on the Biblical "be fruitful and multiply" and that mankind should spread over the earth and develop it in a responsible manner. This views humanity as a GOOD thing which should be nurtured, i.e. that MORE is better. More people means more original thinking, more development, more ways to improve the lives of everyone. Today, the world has far more people than it did thousands of years ago when much of mankind was stuck in a "hunter-gatherer" mode of living which was brutish, unstable and violent, so we see increasing the population lead to an improvement in society.

You have researched and given careful thought; I respect that. Hitler had the Volkswagen and autobahns, but also the horrible Nazi eugenics. Stalin had the catastrophic Lysenko. Fanatic adoption of theory circumvents careful scientific confirmation or falsification. We can't judge an idea by who adopted it alone.

Frankly, it's impossible to run a controlled experiment on such things. One interesting country to watch is Japan, with aging population, but no immigration.